Overturning the Mexico City Policy appears to be the least popular action taken by the Obama administration to date. Only 35% of Americans approve of it according to this Gallup Poll while 58% of Americans disapprove.
Advanced Cell Technology and Robert Lanza have published work in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells which claims attempts to create human-animal hybrid embryo clones using human DNA and animal eggs and then extract stem cells from them won't work because the animal eggs (at least cow and rabbit eggs) can't properly reprogram the human DNA.
With the current attitude of scientists bent on creating stem cell lines from human clones, I wonder if this will lead some cloning researchers to call for new ways to get human eggs.
Lanza also suggests this work proves that creating human clones using SCNT and human eggs and then extracting a stem cell line from them is possible.
Notwithstanding this debate, Lanza takes encouragement from his team's results with human eggs. "For the first time, this paper shows that SCNT activates all the core genes necessary for cellular reprogramming," he says. That suggests scientists should eventually be able to produce patient-matched stem cells from a cloned human embryo. And, Lanza acknowledges, the work also indicates that cloning an actual person is indeed possible.
The prolife students at the University of Calgary who refused to turn their display (which included pictures of aborted children) inward have been charged with trepassing. They had their display out back in November. The final paragraph of the article provides some clue as to why they're being charged now.
Hallman said campus security took down their contact information in November and told them they could be charged with trespassing, but nothing happened until recently, after the group advised the school that they were planning to set up the display again this spring.
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